One of the many brief extrageneric texts found among her late papers after her
death, Dickinson's final intentions toward this fragment remain unknown. It may
have been destined for incorporation into a poem, a letter, or another
composition; alternatively, it may be an experiment in aphoristic form. Though the
relationship between the texts on the opposite sides of the manuscript is
ambiguous, the handwriting is uniform across the manuscript, and the lines on the
A 852a appear to complete the text on A 852. For a different interpretation of
textual boundaries, see Thomas H. Johnson, Letters (1958): PF 73
and PF 64, respectively. Dickinson may have penciled in variants for "gave"
("left") and "dont" ("wont") either during the initial drive of composition or
immediately after finishing a preliminary draft. The variant word choices appear
just below the words to which they refer, in a smaller hand. One stray letter,
possibly an "e," and two additional stray marks appear along the bottom edge of A
852a; the "e" appears perpendicular to the text of the fragment and probably
belongs to an earlier text, perhaps cut away when Dickinson recycled the paper to
jot down the extant lines.